Well, Dwolla still works for a new user wishing to cash out of bitcoins, right?  i.e., There aren't any problems with them receiving money through Dwolla.

The article should be titled: When banks attack.

Wells Fargo took deliberate action that deprives Andelman of his $3,500 that wasn't rightfully theirs to take.

It is a messed up situation.

As far as Andelman using Wells Fargo for checking, ... if your suppliers pay with direct deposit (as credit card merchant processors do) you need an account somewhere to receive those funds at.  A credit union won't work for a business account, so options are limited -- but banking options other than a TBTF do exist.

We in the Bitcoin community too are [generally] hypocrites.

I rail against PayPal, but am willing to use them to buy and sell bitcoins.

I rail against the banks, but I have a bank account and recently did deposit money into an account at a TBTF (for a BitInstant transaction, however :-)  ).

I rail against the dollar, but have more savings in USDs than BTCs.

But progress occurs in baby steps.  I now pay for my mobile prepaid wireless plan each month using bitcoins (at a cost lower than if I were to pay using USDs even!).  I've paid my portion of rent in bitcoins before.  I give a Casascius physical bitcoin as (part of) the tip when dining every so often.  I exclusively use Bitcoin-based ad networks for ad inventory.

These actions are all necessary from all of us to help expand this bitcoin economy, to quicken the arrival of the day where no bank can do this to us because we simply never needed to use a bank in the first place.

Wow, Google Translate doesn't do a particularly great job at translating that article.

This part was clear:


I also was looking for a reference to "System D" as that is the country which defined the term, but it wasn't addressed.

E-mail message received today:


The blog post has further information:

 - http://blog.youtipit.org

Thanks Brian for being a Bitcoin pioneer with this service.

Ya, ... consider it progress though.   The old ways that were not future-proofed go by the wayside and new ways emerge.

You can run BitcoinSpinner instead, right?

Another thread on this:
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68358.0

One other PHP library mentioned here:
 - http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/2488/153

Yup, I was including those holding bitcoins as stakeholders.  I guess 'hundreds of thousands" is probably a better estimate than just than the "thousands" I referred to.  Thinking of them as stakeholders isn't a new concept though.  Those in the U.K. use British sterling pounds.  They are all stakeholders in their national currency.  When one U.K. company grows and increases the level of commerce, those holding pounds will benefit from that.  They are all stakeholders.   The difference though is that government will grow in response and there will be no net benefit to the currency-holder from the economic gains this company's growth provided.  

Bitcoin does not have this property.  Economic growth in the Bitcoin economy translates directly into a higher exchange rate, benefiting those who hold the currency.



If you are mining and have payouts set to wasteful levels, then yes, your transactions will take up a relatively large amount of data storage be expensive to send.  For the rest of the world (i.e., typical usage), a transaction cost 0.0005 BTC or no fee at all (if coins are old enough and the amount comes from just a few inputs).  It doesn't matter if you are sending 2 BTC, or 2,000 BTC, the fee is tiny.  (0.0005 BTC is a fraction of a penny).

Consumer's won't have any control over that.  Techies using the Bitcoin.org client know how to use the coincontrol feature coming in a future release, but that's not a good way to try to identify the customer.

Also, here's an article on how Facebook Credits are being used in marketing (could be used for rewards, as you suggest would work for Bitcoin).  The difference is that the consumer isn't paying with Facebook Credits, but that is a type of reward that can be earned that is different from cash or airline miles.

 - http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/facebook-ads-working-facebook-credits/235220/

Well, you don't even need to do that.  Until you have listening nodes, you can lessen the exposure to a race attack by disabling listening on bitcoind ( -nolisten) and by explicitly connecting (using -connect= ) to a well connected node.  It doesn't mean a race isn't possible, but that the chance that your notification will jive with what comes through in the next block will be > 50% (presumably) even if there were a race attack attempted.

Filmmakers: Tad Lumpkin, Harold Uhl
 - http://theamericandreamfilm.com

Maybe you are misunderstanding the situation.  Dwolla transfers are account-to-account (A2A), and occur instantly.   So Dwolla isn't saying a transfer takes a month to complete.   They do have a 30-day restriction for new users who wish to send money to a bitcoin exchange.   That means you must have had Dwolla pull funds from your bank account and at least 30 days must pass from what that happens.  Once your account hits this "at least 30 days" threshold, then you can transfer funds in your Dwolla account to any Bitcoin exchange that takes Dwolla for deposits.  

Now going the other way, specifically from Mt. Gox to Dwolla, the problem isn't that Dwolla is slow on the transfer, it is that Mt. Gox isn't entering the Dwolla transaction right away -- 7 days, officially, or up to three weeks or more as others are reporting.  The problem isn't Dwolla, the problem is Mt. Gox.   So to avoid this delay, avoid Mt. Gox when you want to cash out of bitcoins.

There are several other exchanges where Dwolla is accepted.  Camp BX, Intersango, Get-Bitcoin.  TangibleCryptography will do a trade for your bitcoins and give you Dwolla as well:
 - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=85395.0

Or find a trade here on this thread.

Or try to find a trade on the #bitcoin-otc marketplace.  Jjust be careful of who you accept Dwolla from, make sure your buyer has a good trust history on the #bitcoin-otc Web of Trust (WoT)
 - http://www.bitcoin-otc.com
 - http://bitcoin-otc.com/vieworderbook.php
 - http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratings.php
 - http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#bitcoin-otc-foyer

I think there are varying requirements for what would earn the bounty so probably what would be useful is to have each bounty offered list the requirements.

I have [Edit: had] a use case where a bounty would be offered [Edit: I'm no longer a backer for a bounty], but I haven't put the specs for it together yet.  It will be along the lines of:

The ability to share a router for use by the operator for internal use as well as offering access commercially.

Software License: [flexible, GPL or BSD]
Hardware supported: [incomplete]  (probably WRT54G, etc., also Ubiquity Nanostation2)
Payment methods: Both Bitcoin or Voucher Code (i.e., a code for a 2 hour pass, 1 day pass, etc.)
Private access: Second SSID for internal use, WPA2 protection
LAN /ethernet: Full access
WLAN DHCP: Supported (optional)
WLAN Static IP: Supported (optional)
Remote admin: Supported (optional)

I'm probably forgetting a few details.

Ha, ya! That works too.  So a local bitcoin client will still see the payment, but as soon as Mt. Gox's sweep kicks in there will be another transfer, to your Mt. Gox account.  All done automatically.  That probably would work just fine!  (Except for the part about adding all the keys to Mt. Gox, which is a manual process, for now.)

How will you know a payment was received?  Monitoring the address using a third-party service, like BlockChain.info perhaps?

I wonder if any clients (e.g., Armory, Electrum or Multibit) can do a sweep to your Mt. Gox of the transaction immediately on 0/unconfirmed.  That way you don't need to receive directly to Mt. Gox.

When IBM was relevant and had a stranglehold on their customers, they behaved in a similar manner.  And then became irrelevant.

When Microsoft was relevant and had a stranglehold on their customers, they behaved in a similar manner.  And then became irrelevant.

Apple happens to get special recognition in companies that follow the vendor lock-in pattern:
 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in#Lock-in_for_electronics_and_computers

Incidentally, Android is selling more than two to one over iPhone, apparently, and that gap is widening:



 - http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9227447/iPhone_Android_account_for_82_of_smartphones_shipped
 - http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/06/11/android-activations-running-at-nearly-1-million-a-day

At some point the market will force Apple to compete and they will open up.

If you weren't aware, there are exchanges where litecoin is traded:

 - https://btc-e.com
 - https://vircurex.com

It is great to see conversation occurring in other forums.

There are even  good responses to the detractors.  For example:
 - http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/1199020/m16991208/#m16991208

What's great to see is that a lot of the people are not just now learning about bitcoin, but they already know of it or know it well.  By engaging in conversation they are at least showing interest, even though many are still skeptical.   They'll come around when Bitcoin serves their needs.

For instance, here's an article describing how marketers are finding that Facebook credits have value as something that can be given out as a reward for action.
 - http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/facebook-ads-working-facebook-credits/235220/

FatWallet is a perfect community for such a promotion as they are the type of crowd that would participate in large numbers.

Their impression of Bitcoin will change the first time they earn a few hundred millibits for doing something trivial, and learn those bits have value.

There certainly are plenty of arbitrage opportunities all around.  The definition of arbitrage is where you are buying and selling at the same time so aren't actually exposing yourself to exchange rate risk.  But trying to do arbitrage manually I've gotten burned by not being able to do both trades quick enough and ended up losing a little on the trade.  Other times, I've done arb trades only to regret having spent all of what little funds I allocate for arbitrage because shortly after an even greater arbitrage opportunity presents itself.

There still is a relatively fair amount of profit that can be found in doing arbitrage on a percentage basis, but without the ability to easily move funds to and from the exchanges, the profit barely makes up for the effort.

There are some tools that might be useful:

 - http://nyse-group.de/bitcoin-arbitrage
 - http://bitcoin-analytics.com/#arbitrage (USD, 6 hour delay without subscription)
 - http://currencyfair.com (Useful for converting fiat from one currency to another,
  e.g., Dwolla USDs -> USDs deposit -> USD/GBP trade -> GPBs withdrawal -> exchange
 - http://transferwise.com  (EUR or GBP  -->   EUR, GBP, PLN or CHF )

I've no idea how they are accommodating the risk ACH reversals with those.